A refrigerator is a home appliance which keeps food refrigerated or frozen for a long time, and a device for curbing activity of many harmful microbes which may spoil food, or removing the microbes is required in the refrigerator.
That is, an air purifying filter or the like may be installed to remove harmful bacteria contained in cooling air inside a refrigerator compartment or a freezer compartment, and a sterilizing element which fits a kind, a size and a biological characteristic of a removal target should be included in the air purifying filter.
In a related art, there had been proposed a filter assembly in which a plurality of filters for deodorization and sterilization in a storage compartment are arranged to be overlapped with each other, and each of the filters is coated with biological and chemical elements including various sterilizing elements.
Also, there has been proposed a sterilizing device in which a light source emitting ultraviolet rays, and a photocatalytic filter which performs a sterilizing function using the ultraviolet rays in a certain wavelength range as a catalyst are installed.
According to Korean Patent Publication No. 10-2013-0015016 which was filed by the applicant, it may be understood that a photocatalytic filter using an LED light source emitting the ultraviolet rays in a wavelength range of 256 nm is employed.
However, in the case of the sterilizing device using the conventional UV photocatalytic filter, there are some disadvantages that the LED light source is expensive, and also is not supplied smoothly.
Also, in the case of the conventional UV photocatalytic filter, there are some problems that the ultraviolet rays are not evenly spread to the entire photocatalytic filter, and a portion of the filter at which a photocatalytic reaction does not occur is generated, and thus the sterilizing function is degraded.